The Rose Princess (10 page)

At the crone’s doleful expression, Elena was forced to swallow the next thing she
wanted to say.

In just three days?

—

D was in a fog.

An hour had already elapsed since he’d first started after the princess. Elena hadn’t
come with him, but he didn’t appear at all concerned by that.

D didn’t actually know where he was, as surprising as that might seem. Though the
gorgeous Hunter was part vampire, his sense of direction had become horribly confused.
But what was truly scary about the young man was how he didn’t seem to rely on it
at all. The fact was, he wasn’t wading through a cloud of complete darkness. The fog
carried a fragrance—that of a rose. Without a doubt, it had to belong to the lovely
princess. The scents of other roses swirled through the fog as well. And yet, there
was no uncertainty in D’s gait.

“You happen to know where we are?” the Hunter’s left hand asked. It sounded anxious.

But what could leave the hand so frightened?

D didn’t reply, and perhaps that added to the left hand’s anxiety, because it continued,
“Now I’m sure you don’t have a clue, but—”

“We’re six hundred feet underground,” said D.

“Sheesh!” the hand spat in reply. “You mean to tell me you don’t know where we’re
going, but you still know how far down we are? You’re an odd one. Well, what have
we here?”

D had already noticed, too—the fog was clearing. The white mass was drifting away,
becoming a thin band that unraveled, coiled, and vanished like the threads of a spider’s
web. And from beyond the fog appeared a bottomless darkness.

“It stinks like hell down here,” the left hand stated.

Having lost the scent of roses, the air and darkness were now choked with the nauseating
stench of corruption.

“It’s not a room—it’s more like a root cellar, I’d say. As far as the dimensions go,
it stretches about six miles across and goes about a hundred fifty feet high. Wild
animals probably live here. Still, it’s awfully quiet. I don’t sense a single—”

Before the hand could say, “thing,” the sound of creaking gears traveled down through
the darkness that loomed over them like the heavens.

As D looked up, his eyes must’ve caught something, because just as his cool black
pupils came to rest on a certain spot on the floor, there was a juicy
plop!

Something had dropped from the ceiling. And the room above the ceiling was apparently
shrouded in darkness.

D started off through the pitch blackness without any sign of agitation. But not toward
where the thing had fallen. He was following the scent of flowers that lingered despite
the putrid stench. The lovely princess was to be destroyed— nothing else interested
D. But was it mere coincidence that the thin thread of fragrance led him right to
where the massive sack lay on the floor?

“There’s raw meat inside,” the left hand said. “A whole ton, roughly.”

A rank odor spilled from the mouth of the bag.

“I’m sure you already know, but I smell something else, too. And it’s—,” the voice
began to say, the words flowing off to the right.

As D was in motion, two bits of darkness came from either side of him and overlapped
before his nose. From the spot where they’d landed, shrill cries arose. Although it
was unclear if this was the sound of a man or a beast, D’s eyes confirmed the presence
of tiny creatures armed with equally diminutive blades about ten feet from him on
either side. Their little fishhook claws and tiny bat-like wings were more cute than
menacing, but the creatures’ ability was made manifest by strands of black hair that
continued to fall from D’s brow.

Crimson points of light began to glow. They were the eyes of homunculi, spiteful blood-light
spilling from faces covered with lumps.

Thin glimmers flew at D from all sides. Short spears aimed at him, though they were
so tiny as to hardly even qualify as spears. The hem of the Hunter’s coat whirled
out to fend off the missiles, but a second later the garment was rent in an “x” shape.
A tiny assassin who’d flown at him with the fusillade of spears had deftly laid into
it with his blade.

Preparing to launch a new assault, the second wave of creatures was coiled to pounce
when their crimson eyes bulged in their sockets. Just as the two homunculi from the
vanguard had landed, they’d split in half lengthwise. Screeching cries of astonishment
intertwined, fading off into the distance like ripples on a pond. But then they stopped
dead.

With his naked blade in one hand, D slowly turned his whole body to face the way he’d
come. Something enveloped his entire frame, and his left hand gasped in surprise.

An eerie miasma likely to leave all who felt it dead or disabled was billowing from
the depths of the darkness. There was an intensity to it that was completely unlike
that of the three knights he’d met in the world above—and yet there was also a strange
similarity. This was the fourth—the last of what people called the “Four Knights of
the Diane Rose.”

The source of the eerie emanations had moved. It was headed of the depths of the vast
darkness. Several seconds later, the presence he’d detected became the sounds of hooves.
Perhaps it was the weird atmosphere of the place that made the echoes of kicked-up
soil warp into torpid, drawn-out sounds.

D didn’t move. With his blade in his right hand, he waited somberly for his foe.

The sound stopped. Fifteen feet lay between it and D.

“What have we here?” a strangely lisping voice called down from high on a mount. “I
came looking for my meal and
opponents
. But the princess has played a cruel trick on me . . . Who knew there were still
men of such beauty in the world?”

D was now gazing at the knight in white armor who sat before him on a white steed.
Or perhaps it would’ve been better to say the Hunter’s eyes were facing straight ahead,
and it just happened that the horse and rider filled his field of vision. Though even
his left hand was enveloped in the eerie aura, the figure of beauty showed not a glimmer
of tension.

“I’m so pleased,” said the knight. The longsword on his left hip shook ever so slightly.
“It’s been a long time . . . since my heart raced so. There’s a fire in my chest .
. . I hear a beating that was supposedly silenced more than five centuries ago . .
. Oh, yes . . . Yes . . .”

His sword sang out once more. The White Knight’s upper body trembled with delight.
The words spilled from his lips as if he couldn’t push them out fast enough.

“Do you want to cut him down, ‘Slayer’? Do you want to slice into this gorgeous man?
I know . . . But just wait . . . We’ll save that pleasure for later . . . First, we
must do our daily cleaning . . .”

The White Knight extended his left arm and began to beckon to the homunculi with his
hand. Languidly. Gently. Like a pale resident of the afterworld beckoning the living.

“Come,” he said. “Come . . . foes that the princess has granted me . . . Oh, it seems
today . . . we have a lively bunch . . .”

A streak of light pierced the white body, and with the hurled spear, the tiny murderers
pounced on him from all sides. They were consumed, deadly weapons and all, by a wave
of white. The movement of the wave resembled the hand that’d called them forward.
When it opened once more, the short spears had all been knocked to the ground and
the four homunculi had been sliced in half at the waist horizontally, as if in answer
to D’s vertical cuts earlier.

“Come,” he said as he beckoned to his next opponents—the only ones who remained.

Three tiny figures zipped at the figure on horseback. Although they were moving at
different speeds and flying at varied altitudes, a flash of white light mowed through
their torsos, leveling all three of them at once.

“My cape . . . wasn’t cut . . . ,” the White Knight muttered.

Only after he’d finished did the six pieces of sundered flesh fall to the ground.
And more horrible than the sight of them was the sound they made as they struck the
earth.

“Not good . . . Not good at all . . . I went through them much faster . . . than I
would’ve liked,” the White Knight said, the words coming out in a pant. His right
hand returned the longsword to his hip as he continued, “And it’s all your fault.
You’re that striking . . . That powerful . . . Oh, you wicked man . . . Now I must
introduce you to ‘Slayer.’”

A tiny metallic rasping rose from the knight’s hip. The sound was so disturbing that
if there’d been anyone else to hear it, they would’ve curled up in a ball and covered
their ears. The sword and scabbard were rubbing against each other. All by itself,
the blade was sliding out of its sheath, then back, only to repeat the whole process
again and again—as if it hadn’t done enough cutting, or spilled enough blood. As if
it was too soon for it to settle back into its scabbard. After all, D was still there,
wasn’t he?

So, this blade was “Slayer.”

—

I

—

T
he warriors stood facing each other in the darkness for a few seconds—the rasping
of Slayer in its sheath the only sound to be heard—while a murderous intent no one
save these two could sense continued to build. When they crossed naked steel, who
would prove the better man? D’s coat had been cut by the attacks of the vicious, nimble
little homunculi, while the White Knight’s cape had remained unscathed. What’s more,
it seemed Slayer itself was imbued with some sort of magic.

The silence was broken by the White Knight as he said, “Time to draw you, Slayer.”

The blade danced out. The motion was so smooth, it looked as if the sword had leapt
into the knight’s hand rather than waiting to be drawn.

D, on the other hand, wasn’t poised for action—he had neither relaxed nor tensed his
body, and his arms hung by his sides.

“You’re good . . . ,” said the White Knight. “Simply by standing there, you’re nearly
enough to make my blood freeze. I doubt I shall ever again face such an opponent in
a battle of life or death.”

The knight suddenly wheeled his horse around. Without a backward glance he rode on,
the hoofbeats growing fainter and fainter.

Though his foe’s actions were perplexing, D didn’t move from where he stood.

What was he waiting for?

The dwindling hoofbeats began to ring louder and stronger. The rider was coming back.
And as the strides of the approaching mount resounded, they echoed a faint yet unshakable
determination to kill.

He kept coming. One hundred fifty feet . . . One twenty-five . . . One hundred . .
.

D was motionless.

The rider’s blade would come crashing down like a tidal wave. But what would happen
when it was met by another sword whipping up from the ground like a gust of snow and
ice?

Thirty feet . . . Fifteen . . . Ten . . .

The gorgeous form was eclipsed by a massive figure and the wild pounding of hooves.
And then—there was the most gorgeous chime in the world, and a flash of white flew
off like a shooting star.

Who would’ve thought that D’s blade would snap off at the hilt?

Sparks shooting from his horse’s hooves as it came to a sudden stop, the White Knight
turned and laughed.

“No blade can stand up to Slayer,” he said. “Now you’re finished.”

And what did D do? He remained in the same spot while the enchanted blade once again
groaned through the air, this time aimed at the Hunter’s skull.

A bloody spray shot out.

“Oh!” the knight cried in surprise when he felt his sword do something other than
sink into flesh.

Slayer’s blade was pinned between the palms of the hands D had clapped together over
his head. However, a dark liquid was also gushing from those same hands. The Hunter’s
own fresh blood rained down on his forehead, streaming down the side of his nose.

Slayer sank a bit deeper.

“Die, damn you! Die! All who do battle with the Slayer die,” the White Knight bellowed,
his eyes tinged red with insanity.

Was this knight’s strength actually a match for D’s? Or was it his sword’s enchantment
that gave him the edge? The blade was slowly sliding down between the palms of D’s
hands, releasing a shower of blood on the Hunter in the process.

Screeching like a crazed raptor, the White Knight let his cry become the force behind
his blade as he brought it down. His bloodshot eyes reflected a hue that was far deeper.
Yes, D’s eyes. The blood that’d coursed down off the Hunter’s forehead ran in a crimson
line to his lips.

D pivoted.

“Oof!” the knight exclaimed, the cry stretching from the back of the mount he’d been
sitting on to the spot fifteen feet away where he thudded to earth again.

As D prepared to stalk over to the fallen knight, a gigantic white form leapt in front
of him—the White Knight’s steed. It stood stock still, blocking the way.

“Outstanding!” the knight exclaimed with apparent pleasure from where he lay, and
his horse dashed over to him at full speed. Gory blade dangling limply from one hand,
the White Knight grabbed the reins that hung by him and finally managed to pull himself
up. Giving a rough shake to his head, he said, “You’re a powerful brute. I believe
I may have broken some bones . . . It can’t be . . . that you descend from the same
sort of blood as our princess . . . You’re the Vampire Hunter I heard about . . .
aren’t you?”

“How right you are!” a voice cried from the darkness. Needless to say, it was that
of the princess. She sounded like a little flirt, but her presence had gone undetected
by the White Knight, and even D himself hadn’t noticed her.

“Oh, my . . . Princess . . . ,” the knight stammered. As demented as he seemed to
be, his mistress apparently merited special treatment. Putting Slayer back on his
hip, he went down on one knee, his head already bowed. Evincing not a trace of madness
or mockery, the act was one of pure loyalty.

With a dance-like movement the pale and lovely princess appeared from a spot about
fifteen feet to the left of the Hunter.

“Well, I trust you had an interesting experience, did you not, my
White Knight?” said the princess. If ever a face glowed, hers did now.

“Yes, milady,” the knight replied succinctly, sounding like a completely new man.

“There are men of such power out in the world. I wonder if even your Slayer could
best him.”

The white helm rose.

“Begging your pardon, but I believe you’ll find—”

The princess hastily waved her hands, saying, “You needn’t say a thing. I was mistaken,
and please forget I mentioned it. This will be decided at some other time. D, that
goes for you, too. Now that you’ve lost your sword, you couldn’t possibly go on,”
she said, but as her eyes studied D’s profile, the fear in them was evident.

D’s eyes were ablaze with blood. Still empty-handed, he advanced.

“Don’t stalk over to me with that frightful expression. Off with you!” the princess
said as she backed away. “Why don’t you go back to the village instead? The flowers
I scattered there should be causing quite a furor.”

A whistle pierced the air.

“Princess!” the White Knight exclaimed, deftly drawing his blade and cutting down
the rough wooden needle.

However, the reason the princess moaned as she pressed down on the left side of her
chest was because another needle had eluded her knight and penetrated not her breast,
but the back of her hand.

“Isn’t that something,” she said with a grin, no doubt highly appreciative of the
way the Hunter had managed to get one of his missiles past Slayer, although the lovely
princess’s skill in narrowly stopping the needle he’d just thrown with her bare hands
had probably impressed D in return.

Still, a second later the hem of the gorgeous Hunter’s coat billowed out as he dashed
at the lovely vampire princess.

The White Knight was ready to meet him.

It was just then that the earth rumbled. Six hundred feet underground, the floor of
this subterranean chamber was braced by an unspeakable mass of earth, yet it thrashed
like a giant serpent.

D’s body flew into the air and was swallowed by the darkness before it ever touched
the floor.

—

Light had returned. D was surrounded by a sea of stars.

“Looks like we’re okay,” said the Hunter’s left hand. It didn’t sound at all apprehensive.
If anything, its tone could’ve been described as matter-of-fact.

Giving no reply, D surveyed his surroundings. The darkness was almost kin to the young
man.

He was on top of a huge rounded stone. A long line of similar stones continued downward,
their faces glimmering in a manner reminiscent of the crescent moon. The lights that
flickered far off in the distance must’ve been those of some community.

“We’re on top of a mountain,” his left hand said incredulously. “Judging by the strength
of the winds and the direction they’re blowing, we’ve gotta be a good two miles up.
Looks like our little friend can teleport stuff. Well, she sure caught us napping!”

D was looking up at the stars, but he quickly lowered his eyes again and began making
his way down the rocks without a sound. The way he leapt from one rock to the next,
he seemed like a master of dance.

Based on the positions of the stars, he must’ve been at the northern extreme of the
princess’s domain. It would probably take a whole day and night of hard riding to
get back to Sacri.

—

“That’s an interesting tidbit,” the old woman said as she tossed a whole
bundle of herbs into the dirty brown liquid boiling in her cauldron.

They were in the dispensary she ran out of a back room in her house. Not one of the
village mayors had ever seen the inside of it, and as Elena stood there by the crone’s
side telling her all about what had transpired at the castle, she was actually the
first visitor the room had seen in fifty years. The noon daylight speared the sooty
lace curtains.

“To think that the princess would ask the Hunter to get rid of her four knights. Well,
anyone as handsome as him could probably do it, too.”

As the conversation seemed like it was about to take a strange turn, Elena tried to
get it back on track, saying, “I thought you’d be more surprised, Mama Kipsch. I mean,
the princess asked him to
kill her knights,
of all things! What the hell could she be plotting?”

“She’s not plotting anything,” the aged witch doctor said purposefully as she took
three tablespoons of red powder from a glass jar and added them to her pot. “She’s
probably telling the truth.”

“You mean she seriously wants them dead? Why?!”

“For the very reason you said. I suppose she wants to be free now.”

“The Nobility abandoning one of their castles?” Elena said. Shrugging her shoulders,
she continued, “I’ve never heard of such a thing. They’re connected to their fortresses,
like light to shadow. One can’t exist without the other. Isn’t that why we’ve been
put through hell?”

“There is no hell,” Mama Kipsch muttered, her tone once again heavy with meaning.
“We humans grow some odd ducks. Like you, or my grandson. It’s not so strange to suppose
it’s the same for the Nobility. After all, they look pretty much the same as we do.”

“Then that bitch might really mean it . . . ,” Elena muttered. Mama Kipsch was the
village’s great repository of wisdom, and her words made the girl finally appreciate
the grave import of what the princess had said.

“But listen—you’re not to mention that to anyone else,” the witch doctor said, her
forcefulness bringing Elena back to her senses.

“Why’s that?”

“Because in this village, there are those who wouldn’t be too happy with the news.”

A horrible expression briefly passed across Elena’s face.

“I suppose you’ve got a point there.”

“But enough about that. Help me think of some way to deal with the crisis at hand.
I simply don’t have enough blue yaki moss to finish making this medicine,” Mama Kipsch
said as she folded her arms.

“Blue moss . . . Do you mean the stuff I think you do? From the Shamballa Forest?”

“Oh, forget I mentioned it,” the old woman told her. “I’m sure I’ll find something
else I can use instead.”

A thought seemed to occur to Elena, and she said, “There’s nothing else to use and
you know it. You’ve always been a lousy liar, you know. Okay, I’ll go get it.”

“Don’t. It’s high noon already. Even on your bike it’d be two hours to the forest
and another hour to find the moss—You’d be lucky to make it back by five o’clock Night.
And the forest is far too dangerous.”

“Hell, I’m not going alone. That’d be nuts. I’ll bring my boyfriends with me. Luckily,
they were off drinking at a warehouse on the edge of town, so some of them didn’t
get the vampire rose baptism.”

“You’ll be throwing your lives away,” Mama Kipsch told the girl.

“We’ll never know if we don’t try. Your own grandson lost his life doing what he believed
in. And not even for his girlfriend, but for an unrequited love. We all respect the
hell out of that.”

Turning her eyes to the floor, the old woman then placed a hand on Elena’s shoulder
and thanked her. “Okay, you’ll get some for me then?” she asked.

“Of course. I wanna do whatever I can to make things miserable for those bastards.”
And with those words, Elena ground her back teeth together as if testing the firmness
of her own resolve.

—

II

—

Going outside, Elena headed toward the square—it was less than a three-minute walk
from Mama Kipsch’s house. A hastily improvised tent had been stretched over the spot
where so many of the village’s inhabitants had buried themselves. Needless to say,
it was there to ward off the rays of the sun. Though there was a facility for people
who’d been turned into Nobility situated on the southern edge of the village, it couldn’t
begin to accommodate them all. The tent had taken the villagers who remained unaffected
a good five hours to put up after sunrise, and it still hadn’t been large enough—a
third of the covering had been improvised from blankets and fabric.